Stephen Daisley

This one has everything: drag queens, swastikas, X and freedom of speech. Dr Anne Woodhouse is a clinical psychologist in Inverness who has just been cleared of misconduct charges by her regulatory body, the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS). The accusation was that Dr Woodhouse’s ‘fitness to practise is impaired by reason of

Scotland’s NHS is in crisis and Scotland’s government is in denial. A new study by the former head of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow presents a grim diagnosis of the nation’s health and the services tasked with tending to it. Much of the reporting is focused on a steep increase in the time

The Irish are in many ways the ideal neighbours. They’re quiet, industrious, peaceful, send their best talents to London, and turn out poets and playwrights we can pass off as English to gullible Americans. There are, unfortunately, one or two character flaws. They never tire of reminding you that your forefathers shot their forefathers, a

This week Catherine Connolly, the newly elected President of Ireland, welcomed John Swinney, First Minister of Scotland, to the Áras an Uachtaráin, official residence of the republic’s head of state. Her government X account posted some photographs of the meeting and described Swinney, who leads Scotland’s secessionist Scottish National party, as ‘the first foreign head

With his viral video explaining debt-to-GDP ratio through the medium of biscuits, Gordon McKee is putting the ‘nom’ into economics. Since his election to the Commons last year, the Glasgow South MP has established himself as the Labour politician with the best social media game, a sort of Robert Jenrick of the left. His latest

It is the 9/11 of the blue ticks, the Hindenburg of the grifters, the dotcom bubble of the slop-peddlers. The influencer industry has been left reeling by a new function on X which allows readers to see the location from which any given account is operating. The latest update makes it possible to establish when

Schools in Northern Ireland which teach pupils that Christianity is true are breaking the law. That is the ruling of the Supreme Court, which finds that religious education lessons and collective worship which aren’t ‘objective, critical and pluralistic’ are a form of ‘indoctrination’. It also finds that allowing parents to withdraw their children from these

None of Shabana Mahmood’s asylum reforms is as radical as the terms in which she is talking about this issue. In an op-ed teeing up Monday’s announcement, she writes: ‘Unless we act, we risk losing popular consent for having an asylum system at all.’ I cannot remember the last time a Home Secretary made such

By now you’ll know all about the crisis at the BBC, especially if you watch or read or listen to the BBC, which seems to be reporting on little else. There is nothing that exercises the corporation quite like the opportunity to talk about its specialist subject. You know the resignation of director general Tim

Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City has prompted triumphalism in his supporters and despondency among his detractors. Depending on your political proclivities, the Big Apple is about to become one of two things: a revolutionary utopia where New Yorkers City-Bike from their socialised studio apartments to their worker-owned creativity pods, stopping off

One of the most fascinating cases of institutional self-harm in modern Britain is policing. Not just the oft-criticised Met (though it is spectacularly adept at inflicting needless wounds on itself) but police forces up and down the country. The two-tier policing of crimes against ethnic minorities is a particularly pungent example, but there is also the plainly

Amid the grim fluorescence of a police interview suite, a glimpse of where we are and where we are heading. The place is Hammersmith police station, the date August 30, and the time a little after 2 a.m. An unnamed lawyer in his 40s, whom we are told is Jewish, has been detained for allegedly

Whenever Donald Trump proposes a policy that runs counter to the progressive consensus, there are three stages of response: it’ll never work, it’s a disaster, it was our idea all along. We are at stage three on Trump’s truce in Gaza. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State in Joe Biden’s administration, says: ‘It’s good that President

The SNP government in Edinburgh has published another white paper on the constitution, ‘A Fresh Start with Independence’. It’s a bold title when your last white paper on this issue was published a whole 34 days ago. Indeed, between June 2022 and April 2024, the Scottish Government produced 13 white papers on independence. Putting out